


Our Lady of Forgetting

by Xenamorph



Category: Sleepaway (RPG)
Genre: Animal Death, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Character Death, Eldritch, F/F, Frostbite, Gen, Horror, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Memory Magic, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25995448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xenamorph/pseuds/Xenamorph
Summary: This is extremely niche, but I've recently started playing the amazing game Sleepaway with my friends and this is based on a few of the options listed in the rulebook.
Relationships: Original Female Character(s)/Original Non-Binary Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

Cricket O’Malley was a new songleader at Camp Thunderclap, taking on the world with only a guitar and a voice nothing like his parent. But that was fine, children are never meant to be the carbon copy of their parents, no matter how much either party might want that.

Cricket O’Malley was, in other ways, his parent’s child. He holds his guitar the way Junebug taught him to, He knows a few of the songs ze sung when ze worked at the camp, but not in the way he knows his own. Enough to hum, but not enough to actually sing. He learned his songs in a different way, There are songs and then there are stories and Cricket O'Malley has known the difference since they were a young child and Anna Arachne Aberdeen shook a bottle of carved little bone pieces (vi had said that they were vir baby teeth but Cricket O'Malley never believed vir) and said “You’re going to die one of these days O’Malley-” Anna Arachne never said his full name at once and he returned the favor- “and you will not be found.”

At the time, Cricket O'Malley had just kicked vir in the shin and told vir that they were about to be late for free swim. Ah the trials and tribulations of youth. It had been fun, to forget all about the magic and how realistic it was that Anna Arachne could really tell those things about him. It was easier to not pay that sort of attention, no matter how many times his parent told him to be careful of what he promises to who.

But Cricket O'Malley never expected this, never expected to find snow in the middle of summer. It was the backend of the woods, somewhere that few people went (he hadn't told anyone he was going he didn't think he would have to, this camp was a safe place wasn't it?), but that didn't mean this. There was a small cabin in the woods (Cricket O'Malley found it hilarious, even as he walked inside, he always liked horror movies even though they made him cringe up in fear), and there was snow on the ground around it. It reminded him of some story, something put to song about a woman with a cabin and something something snow, if he focused then he'd be able to figure it out but it was getting a little hard to focus.

His hand made contact with the metal of the handle, and he hissed. It was freezing to the touch, like it had just been dipped in liquid nitrogen and taken out, Cricket O'Malley glanced at his hand and it was already red from the cold. But this seemed to be the house that his kids (not kids-kids but those that sat closest to him and always sang the loudest and most enthusiastic) had been worried about. An empty cabin with foggy windows in the middle of summer and a hurting cold handle that almost froze Chirp's hand to it. Cricket O'Malley had asked around to the older workers at camp, wanting to see how much lore there was for the woods, and what he got was something that could be put to song, and was.

 _Beware the lady of visage fair, with snow white eyes and wind in her hair. And though she craves just company, you'll freeze forever and never be free_. 

It was one of the scarier songs, and apparently it had been passed down for a while. Songleader to songleader and though phones weren't technically allowed at camp, there was an exception in the rule solely for counselors. So he called his parent (he trusted Junebug to tell him the truth and when he could hear zir sigh out and tell him to take a seat he knew something was bad), and he learned exactly what had happened when ze was at camp (at camp as a camper and not as a Crafter or a Songleader, it had been years since ze had actually thought about that and he did feel guilty for upending hard memories for his parent, he had to know).

Junebug told him about Charlie Stoker, the good, the bad and the ugly. About how he always laughed the loudest at any joke that was told, funny or unfunny or so bad it was good, and how he clapped people on the shoulder instead of hugging them. Of how ze thought that he was a lesbian and asked him out and then dove into the lake to avoid embarrassment when he admitted that he was just a twink. And of how he died. Not related to what she suspected the rumors of the cold house were, but close enough related that the story was needed. About how the old cabins behind dreamer's landing had been really abandoned, about the murder that had taken place there and why ze always said to never leave threats or words untended to in fear of someone else answering. 

And then Junebug finally (finally, Cricket O'Malley wasn't impatient as a rule but when it came to his campers he tended to have a short rope) got to Her. Her is what they called one of the figures that was in the woods, others took to calling her _The Lady_ but they usually went missing so Junebug never used that for Her. She was a figure in the woods, all tall and pale and seeming like a strike of lightening (and here Junebug gave the laugh of someone who knew another Lightening and knew them well), and she was always cold. Asking if people could follow her, that there was someone in trouble and she needed someone to come with her to help her.

 _Don't trust what you see, Cricket O'Malley_ , Junebug had told zir kid (kid, like he was still just a ten year old asking why his parent had to leave every summer), _And always make sure you have matches on hand._

And well, who was Cricket O'Malley to deny his parent his word. So he told zir that he would, and that he'd stay safe. But he also made _sure_ that his parent would know that he was going to try to protect his kids and all ze had to say was _I'll keep you in my memories_. And for some reason that was reassuring.

The sound of crunching leaves behind him knocked Cricket O'Malley out of his thoughts, and he whirled around. Standing in front of him was a tall, beautiful woman. Long white hair that seemed to be flowing in a wind that he couldn't feel, Her pupils were the only bit of color in her eyes, seeming to be just all sclera and no iris. "Oh, it's been so long since someone has come to _me_!" Her voice was lilting and soft as she breezed past him, sending him shivering and gasping as she opened the door and ushered him in. 

Cricket O'Malley stayed outside, smarter than she would like, "Oh, sorry but my parent told me to never enter strangers homes. Why don't we stay out here and you tell me why you've been chasing after my kids?"

"Why don't you come inside and have something sweet, you work so hard at that camp of yours someone should be taking care of you!" She cooed out at him, the stole around her shoulders seeming to move (no, it was moving, the small chittering of minks could be heard and Cricket O'Malley felt ice inject into his veins).

"Oh, I'm not that hungry, but thank you for the offer. Please answer my question," He could hear the tension rising his voice and he swallowed down his feelings. No need to antagonize a possible Stranger, especially not when she hasn't done anything openly aggressive just yet to him.

"Alright fine, I've only been chasing after them to get them to leave my woods." It was a lie and they both knew it, Cricket O'Malley was getting so very tired of the Lady's (Her, not the Lady, those who say the Lady always get taken) shenanigans.

"Well then, I'll be sure to send everyone as far away from this place as possible. We wouldn't want you getting disturbed now would we?" The words were kind and breezed out, all smiles and charm that took so many years of crafting to perfect. 

There was a quick change of emotions across her face, going from rage back to placid smiles in a second (not quick enough for it to escape his understanding though), but soon enough she was taking a few steps closer (he took a few steps back), "Oh, that won't be necessary. I'm just looking out for their safety after all, why don't you come inside though? I'm sure we can just talk it out and make sure that there are no misunderstandings."

"No." 

"No?" Her voice was startled, like she sincerely hadn't expected anyone to refuse her. "Oh, but darling, it's so cold out here, isn't it? Why don't you come inside?" There were so many things wrong there, it was warm out (it was mid-July after all), and the only spot of cold was coming from the home itself. "I promise you, that we can all get this sorted out if you just come inside and have something sweet. I'll cook it up just for you and we can have that lovely little chat." Her slender hand closed around Cricket O'Malley's wrist, burning cold as she gave a gentle little leading tug.

Cricket O'Malley shifted his body weight, keeping his feet shoulder width apart and making sure that for every bit she tugged, he leaned the same bit backwards. He kept himself solid and steady on the ground, not wanting to get any closer to the cabin than he had to. The open doorway allowed him a glance inside, inside to the perfect home inside of there.

And it was perfect, really it was. There was no dust, no dirt or mess anywhere. Everything seemed to have its place and everything seemed to be in that place. There was frost on the windows (wrong wrong wrong), and another slightly squirming coat hung up on a peg and a doorway that led into a kitchen that looked much to similar to the one in his own childhood home. It was too uncanny, too cold and clean but the objects and the setup and the layout were the exact same (too clean to be his childhood home, this wasn't the house of a four kid family this was a showroom at Ikea). 

His foot had stepped inside the boundary line before he could stop himself, and the door shut behind him with a cool winter wind. "I thought I said I didn't want to come in."

"Oh, I don't recall you ever saying that, it must not have happened," She breezed past his concerns, patting the back of his hand as she began to lead him into the kitchen.

It was his childhood kitchen. Not really, but it was close enough to be scary. Someone once said that the biggest thing to fear is something that was just a few shades away from what we know. Or maybe no one has said that, but they should've. Cricket O'Malley is definitely feeling the fear right now as he looks around the room. The same rectangular window above the sink, the same picture frame (though this version was fogged over with frost to the point of obscuring the picture) right next to the door. Same fridge, same oven, same table and chairs. It was like she had found a picture of his childhood kitchen and took it out of context and placed it into her home.

"Do you like it? I like it. I put so much work into this place for you," It was getting a little hard to separate the lies from the all too convenient truths. It seemed ridiculous that she could've done this just for him, but after the incident that Junebug told him with the Fog and the Hollow Backed Wheel, he couldn't cross anything out. 

"Well, that's very kind of you," growing up in the South instilled Cricket O'Malley with a constant state of politeness. It sometimes bit him in the ass, but it was working for his advantage for this. Best to not let anyone hate you here, you never know who has magic and who knows the Craft and who is Other. 

"Sit down," The words were more of an order than a request, and Cricket O'Malley found himself sitting down before he could control that. The seat was hard and freezing against his khakis (after all, why would he wear anything warmer in the middle of summer?), and it was uncomfortable. "Don't you feel so much better? Now, what's your favorite type of dessert? I'd love to make it for you." Her long fingers carded through his hair, making him flinch and cringe away from her cold touch. 

Again, there was the glimmer of rage across her face that Cricket O'Malley just barely caught when he looked at her in her odd eyes, "I'm not all that hungry, sorry. But let's talk about you and my campers, I get that you don't want people coming by your cabin, but you can't be terrorizing my campers." The pretense that she was just some random old woman who lived in the woods was exhausting to keep up, but Cricket O'Malley wasn't going to break first. If it just took playing along with an obvious lie, then Cricket O'Malley would play. 

"Well, maybe not, but I just don't want those poor little kids getting lost or hurt in these woods! I know you run a tight ship over there at Camp Snakebite, but I don't want you having to deal with any sort of legal trouble if a few kids ran into the little traps I have set up for the animals. One too many times a deer ate my food, so you understand that I have to put out the traps."

Cricket O'Malley knew full well the sort of traps that she was talking about, the bear traps and pit falls laid in the woods that the campers (thankfully none of them were along, they were all in groups of five or more), but still he plastered a sympathetic smile on his face, "Oh, of course I understand. I just wish you would put a few markers up. Nothing that animals would be able to understand, but something to make sure that the campers don't stumble in and get themselves hurt. I know that while it is your property, it's still camp land so I think we'd both be on the ballot for legal action. I'm just trying to protect you, of course."

"What sort of food did you say you wanted?" She asked, redirecting the conversation in quite an annoying way. An question that had been answered over and over again, but still, Cricket O'Malley answered again.

"I'm not hungry, what did you say your name was again?" He narrowed his eyes, tilting his head slightly as he gazed at her. Wanting to know what sort of name she'd give him and there was something that was tickling at the back of his skull as he focused on her words. Camp Snakebite, he'd heard that name before and not because it was this camp. This camp hadn't been called Snakebite in a while, though sometimes Cricket O'Malley could still see the old logos underneath old paint. Snakebite, that's what it was called when his parent went here, it had been at least forty years at this point. 

"Oh, all of my friends just call me The Lady, and we are friends now aren't we?" He remembered his parents warning that everyone who-

The memory of the warning left him, and every time he attempted to think back on it his mind burned. Burned like his hand had when he touched the frozen door handle, burned like his thighs were against the chair. There was something about the title and something about a warning, but Cricket O'Malley couldn't remember. Was this her Strangeness? Not the rot of the King, or the clatterings of bones, or too many eyed rabbits all silent and staring in the fields. Was it just the cold heat of ice and frostbite, snow blinded memories that he couldn't reach? It was obvious this woman wasn't human, the stole and the eyes and the too blue lips that reminded Cricket O'Malley of the corpses they found on Mount Everest, but was this the Strangeness?

"I wouldn't call us friends just yet, acquaintances surely, but not friends. That's a little too fast for me," He grinned, charming as he ever was as he fiddled with his hands. The distinct memory of forgetting something, but he couldn't remember what he had even forgotten. There was something empty in his head, where a memory probably should be and Cricket O'Malley wasn't as concerned as he should've been by that. A little wordless ditty in his head, pinging around in there and making him hum like that could draw the words back to him.

"I wouldn't say it's fast as all! We've known each other for so long, haven't we?" The lies seemed to very easily drip off of the Lady's lips, blue though they were. Her cold hand reached across, covering Cricket's with hers as she rubbed a steady beat with her thumb across the back of his hand. "I feel like we've known each other forever in fact," She smiled, and something else froze. Cricket O'Malley wasn't sure what left him, but something did.

He tried thinking back, focusing on the tune that was in his head. Or maybe there wasn't really a tune in his head, all he could think up were other songs that he had preformed, but nothing dark and cold like what he knew was there. There was something freezing about this woman, dangerous as an avalanche and as thinking you're just going to lay down for a moment. But Cricket O'Malley couldn't place how to get him out, or what exactly he should be on the lookout for. "I'm pretty sure we've only just met, but I look a lot like my parent." He paused before saying her name, still knowing the old rules about nicknames and true names and monikers when dealing with any sort of strangeness you didn't know the rules for. "Melolonthinae, they used to come here as a kid and then they stayed as a counselor," The name, while scientifically accurate, wasn't accurate enough to be a name that had power. It was just what ze was: a June bug. Or a May Beetle, or a June Beetle. But not Junebug, not the slow honey covered song or warm weathered hands or steadiness when ze held you in zir arms that made up who Junebug was.

"Oh...I think I remember that name." There was a note of _danger danger danger_ in her voice as she drifted to sit in the chair across from him. The table was small and circular and perfect (there weren't any notches or nicks or places where a much younger Cricket O'Malley had carved little designs into the top of the wood with a penknife that he had gotten from some aunt or uncle or relative), and it was easy enough for her to remain holding his hand even as she sat down. "I'm sure that parent of yours raised you well, didn't they? And I know what they must've said about me," She pouted, fluttering her eyelashes at him like he was anything that could be considered weak (and he could be, but not for her).

"Actually, she never told me anything about a lady in the woods, so I'm coming here completely blind. But you do seem like a lovely person," Cricket O'Malley grinned, easy and wide like a summers day but there was something much too fragile behind it. People called him his parent's child, but they were always wrong. Sure, he had the hair and the eyes and the strong jawline. He had the weathering on his hands that ze had on zirs, but he didn't have the strength. He didn't have the reliability and the earth worn, and the steady going that made zir a Wagon Wheel. He was susceptible, falling ill at a moments notice and never making a winter or fall without falling ill at least once. Susceptible to frost and sleet and snow and bad weather and bad times and he was a Blossom. Pretty and wild and lovely, but fragile.

"I'm a very lovely woman, and- oh deary me! I've told you what to call me and yet you haven't told me even the slightest bit about yourself!" The stole around her continued to move, writhing and worming on her shoulders as she let it slip down further on her arms. He could've sworn that he saw the flashing of beady little mink eyes, but that could've been a trick of the light. A lot of things could be the trick of the light, the impressions on the windows that looked like frosted over fingerprints, the fact that the lamps seemed to be unlit but were still emitting light. The fact that the Lady seemed to always have a faint little shiver going through her even though it was the middle of summer.

"Actually-" because while Cricket O'Malley was fragile he was not stupid and he never went down without some sort of fight- "You haven't told me what to call you. You just told me what you like being called, and what your friends call me. But we aren't friends, we aren't friends at all because we've only just met. Yeah, of course we could eventually become friends but that doesn't mean that I can or should just slip into nicknames. So tell me, what do I call you?" He felt a little fire light in his stomach, something that warded away the frost that was slowly sinking into his veins for the moment at least.

The fire reminded him of Delphinium Abrus (the full name was necessary, with all of the things that were leaving him he couldn't forget her name). The same sort of aggression that flowed through every vein in that King's body, the flashing smiles and the slight chip on her left canine that gave her a fang. The warmth of her laugh and her smile and the way that she would shove his shoulder and tell him to shut the fuck up before kissing him. The swing of her axe whenever she chopped firewood outside the mess hall for his sing-a-long at the campfire later, the way she would sit across from him at the bonfire so that he could see the sparks reflect in her dark brown eyes. He had to get back to her, had to let her warm his tired bones with the fire that was in everything she does.

"And I told you, we _are_ friends." She seemed to be getting a little annoyed with him, a tense little smile playing on her lips as she gripped his hand a bit harder. "You may call me The Lady, but I can't be a Lady to you if you haven't even given me a nickname!" There was a light little laugh that left her lips, chiming and high like ice shattering underfoot and dropping you into freezing water.

Cricket O'Malley pulled his hand away, rubbing it with the other as he felt the bite of the cold slowly leave him, "No. I'm not giving you a nickname unless you give me something more than just a moniker. What do I call you?"

"Your. Lady." The two words were almost bitten out, and the whites of her eyes (everything but the pupil, humans didn't have that this was Strangeness this had a song connected to it) flashed. Snowblindness almost hit him and he shivered. Hands reaching up to rub at his exposed arms and trying to generate heat. "What can I call you?"

"You-" There was something buzzing against his thigh and it broke him out of the staring match that had risen up. He shoved his hand into the pocket, and drew out his phone. Standing up from the seat (he almost stuck to the chair but he ripped his khakis away. He paced to the entrance to the kitchen, back to the woman and keeping the exit in his eyesight, "O'Mal speaking." Sections and segments were never enough, and anyone who was important and calling would understand.

"Babe, where the fuck are you?" Delphinium's voice was hissed out like she was trying to make sure that no kids overheard her. "The campfire's about to start and no one's seen you in hours, people heard about you going out to try to figure out that woods woman and no one's seen you since. Tell me that you haven't been fucking spirited away to some sort of realm because if you have I'm going to have to postpone the bonfire and that'll disappoint the kids."

Something warm blossomed in Cricket O'Malley's chest as he heard the very well veiled concern in his girlfriend's voice. She never showed any concern where people could hear it, and he had long been adept at understanding when she was really and truly concerned. So he couldn't laugh, no matter how funny he found her constantly, because he knew that Delphinium had gotten seriously scared in the hours- wait. "What do you mean hours? I've been here, like, thirty minutes tops, I couldn't have been gone that long." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his hostess stiffen up and the familiar glare in her eyes that would've snowblinded him if he was looking dead on at her.

"Are you playing a joke on me? You've been gone for six hours, the bonfire is starting we've already had dinner and now we're missing our Songleader. Hell, if you didn't pick up when I called we were going to send a search party. You better get back quick because everyone's getting impatient and when the kids get impatient they get scared and when they get scared they all become idiots."

A breathless noise (could've been a laugh, could've been a gasp) left his lips and he nodded his head before realizing that she couldn't see, "Right, yeah no I'm on my way. If I take more than five minutes to call you back, call again. You know how the service gets out here," The words were bright and cheery and forced out in order to communicate what he meant. I might be stuck, there's something Strange with a capital S going on, reel me back in.

"Aye-aye, captain!" Abrus's voice was teasing and laughing, letting Cricket O'Malley know that he could fall back and she would catch him.

A soft noise of love and acknowledgement, and he slipped his phone into his pocket, "Sorry about that, seems like the day has really slipped away from me. I'm needed back at camp, this was lovely though, thank you so much for welcoming me into your home." His voice was sweet and Southern as he began to take all the steps towards the door (was it getting further away?).

"Oh, but you haven't eaten yet! Everyone at camp has definitely eaten without you and you shouldn't go back hungry!" There was concern in her voice, though it was hard to tell how legitimate it was. And there was a cold wind biting at his heels and encouraging him to get closer and closer to the door.

On his thigh, Cricket began to drum out a beat. One of the older story songs that he had memorized, _beware of a lady with visage fair_ , and he kept himself in beat. Steps matching up to the drumming of his fingers and the door finally was getting closer to him, "Sorry, but I'm sure my darling kept a plate warm for me. I wouldn't want to trouble you and it would take far too long for you to cook up than it would if I just walked back." He knew that his voice was sing-song, matching up with the beat that he had created and he soon stepped over the threshold. 

Finally in the light of day, he could see that Delphinium was right. The sun was high in the sky and the time had definitely sped far past him relative to how long he had stayed in that frozen (both in time and literally) home. He barely turned on his heel to give a little wave, "This was fantastic, please stop terrorizing my kids, goodbye!" And then sped off. Not giving her any time to sweet talk him back as he bolted through the woods. Though it was at least seven in the afternoon (or in the evening but there really was no difference to him), the sun was still high enough so that he could know where he was going. Soon enough he broke out of the edge of the woods, not even pausing by his cabin for his guitar (he knew that Delphi would have it ready for him as well as the dinner that he missed) and just going straight for the mess hall.

Like he expected, Delphinium was waiting on the front deck of the mess hall holding his guitar. Her scarred and calloused hands were almost wringing the neck of it and she barely stopped herself from dropping it when she saw him. In a second (Delphinium ran fast, jumping over the steps and just hitting the ground running), Cricket O'Malley was embraced in one of the tightest hugs of his life. Delphinium's voice was hissed out and choked up (barely, almost imperceptibly but he was always good at perception), "Where the fuck were you, Cricket O'Malley?"

He grunted slightly, his arms wrapping around her and squeezing her close to his chest, "In the woods, I met the lightning strike woman and uh...that's strangeness. There's strangeness in the woods and it was so cold, I had no idea that time was even passing. Honestly, you know that I wouldn't just leave you in the clutch if it could've been avoided."

"I know that!" The words were loud and right next to his ear, "I just- god I thought you were dead. I thought you had just stumbled into a bear trap and then into a pit trap and we would just find your embarrassingly dead body and I'd have to mourn you and I'd have to tell Ju-"

Cricket O'Malley remembered how odd she had looked when he mentioned his parent and he shushed her, "Don't say their name, whatever that woman was- whoever that woman was she has some sort of grudge against my parent. We can't risk giving out a name."

Delphinium drew back, brow furrowed and the little cut on her upper lip was pale and stretched with her grimace, "I'll tell the others, make sure that everyone about you and zir are kept locked up tight." For a second, he was so very concerned about that lady (not The Lady) knowing his parents pronouns before he remembered. So many kids here use ze/zir, so many counselors as well, that information was safe. "I know you must've given her something, I'll just update everyone on whatever name you told her."

"I said that people called my parent Melolonthinae." The word was almost hissed out, and he continued to look around the pavilion. Like he expected that out of the corner of his eye he'd see a white figure and a too bright smile and too white eyes. "Do I have time to eat or are we just going right into song time?" It was almost a joke, but the worry was real enough. It had been hours since he ate, and he wasn't sure that after all of the ordeals of the day they had enough energy for a rowdy song.

"Just about, Anna Arachne Aberdeen is entertaining all of them with vir weird things so like. Maybe eat fast, we don't want to leave any lasting trauma on those kids because Anna Arachne started to foretell their deaths," There was a little laugh, but there was some truth to what she said. It was a little disturbing, how easily Arachne Aberdeen could slip into going darker and darker no matter how young the audience was.

Cricket O'Malley sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth and he moved with his girlfriend into the kitchen. He was right, Delphinium had heated up a dish of the food that had been served just for him. There was a gentle little smile on his face (oh he looked so much like his parent), as he jostled her shoulder. It was his wordless way of love and affection as he devoured the plate of mashed potatoes and slightly overcooked chicken. Delphinium watched the door, making sure that none of the kids seemed too worried and anxious and that Anna Arachne wasn't look too fanatic. 

It was only ten minutes of eating, and then Cricket O'Malley was picking up his guitar and heading out. The campers seemed to be a little more morose and whispering, so he started tuning his guitar up for one of his story songs. It was a warning and a reminder and a story all in one, and with his visit to that old, freezing, perfect home, Cricket O'Malley figured that his kids needed all of those. He moved around the campfire, clapping Anna Arachne Aberdeen on the shoulder just as vi was about to do that one trick where vi rattles vir bone cage (what vi calls the little box with vir runes in it) and pulls a spider out. "Well, thank you kindly for entertaining the kiddos for me, Mx Anna, but I think it's about time for a song, huh?"

As always, his words were met with thunderous cheers (though there was a tense little undercurrent that Cricket O'Malley almost felt guilty for taking advantage of). He sat down on his large log, catching Delphinium's eye across the fire as he strummed the first few bars of ' _Our Lady Oubliette_ '. That name rung a bell in his head, of how insistent she was on being called The Lady. Of how cold it was, how pale she was, the perfect house and the freezing temperatures in the middle of summer. The song was even more important now, now that he knew just who was waiting in the woods and who they were in danger of.

"Now, I know y'all like your spooks and scares, and I bet my coworker here has really set the mood of the night with vir tricks. So I think it's time for a story song," Cricket felt a slow smile spread his lips as he saw the older campers (those that had been coming for years and knew almost every song in his book) get excited. The whispering and the drumming of feet and fingers set a nice beat to Cricket's song. His voice was low and full, sonorous being the best word to describe it (not that anyone would aside from Anna Arachne). Vi had once said it reminded vir of looking down at the lake on a full moon night from the roof of the mess hall, and though that was decades after the original time he did it, again Cricket kicked vir in the shin and told vir that they were going to be late to the lake.

" _Beware the lady of visage fair, with snow white eyes and wind in her hair. And though she craves just company, you'll freeze forever and never be free_." The words were sung low and soft, but audible over the fire crackling. No one spoke, not even the more rowdy of the kids there was no noise other than the forests and the fire and him. " _Beware her eyes and beware her voice, or else she'll leave you without any choice._ " There were a few kids, those closest to the fire, that shivered and rubbed at their arms and warmed their hands. " _Don't go alone, don't fall for traps, when going to the woods, bring a map."_ It was a little harder to remember the words, but the instrumental came easy.

Cricket O'Malley just hoped that no one would be an idiot after tonight. That the song would do it's job and warn them away from that oddly perfect cottage with the oddly perfect woman. The ones that knew the song, knew the tale of the Lady of Frost, the Lady of Forgetting, began to thump to the beat. Adding in a little echo to his guitar strums with their stomps and drumming (Cricket O'Malley was rather glad he didn't have to give any signals, the last three times he'd tried it took a little to corral everyone into doing it and that always threw off the pacing). The song carried on, as smooth and soft as ever, those not drumming seemed entranced as he sang, leaning forward and slightly bumping into each other.

But that's not what Cricket O'Malley was focusing on. Because instead of his lovely girlfriend Delphinium sitting across from him, taking her place was the very woman that he was singing about. He didn't let it interrupt the song, he had seen so much more disturbing things across from him while singing and he had never ever let it interrupt his song. It kept the kids distracted, and a distracted distracter was never a good thing. Kids were perceptive, sometimes annoyingly so, but that just meant that they knew when something was wrong. And if Cricket O'Malley wanted to make sure this lesson stuck, he couldn't show that there was someone who wasn't supposed to be there. So he kept his eyes on the lady, even as the fire burned his eyes and smoke got in the way of his vision, he kept singing as well. Keeping his voice low and light as he talked about how to make sure you're never frozen, forgotten, or faked (he's heard enough tales of the Hollow Backs to know how to spot fakes). 

The Lady only smiled (would it be safer to call her Oubliette, safer to just call her Frau Faste or Dolores?) at him, and he could see the glint of fangs behind her soft lips. The bonfire flames guttered slightly, as if blown by a harsh winter wind, and Cricket O'Malley sang louder. Warning and wild and strumming just a bit faster, it was almost off tempo but the campers seemed to get back into it with their thumps and claps. The song finished over with a final howl (mimicking the howl of the wind and the chill that she brings) and it was finished. 

The campers weren't silent after that, they never really were, but they were a little more subdued. There was the usual echoing howls of the campers as they mimicked him, but the group seemed to be focused on scaring each other as opposed to doing anything more serious. Thankfully, Charm wasn't poking at the fire or trying to push anyone into the fire or doing anything with the fire (Cricket was so thankful for that fact, he had rushed to the nurse's office too many times because key had touched, pushed, or otherwise involved ker body or others bodies with the firepit). Instead key seemed to be focused on creeping up on ker friends. Jumping at them from the shadows and cackling so very loudly when they started screaming and yelling.

A few of the other small groups (there were always groups in camps, but at least at Thunderclap they weren't really cliques) seemed to be following Charm's example. There were a lot of screams and cries and extremely angry yells of various names and monikers and when Cricket O'Malley looked back across the fire, Frau Faste was gone. A hand on his upper arm made him jolt, jerking around to see that it was just Delphinium, "Oh, hey there."

"Did I scare the big bad story teller?" Her voice was high and laughed out as she pressed herself up against Cricket O'Malley's side. Legs folding slightly as she rested her head on his shoulder and nuzzled into him, "You got really into that song there, you kept staring me dead in the eye and glaring at me," Their voice slowly trailed off, and Delphinium narrowed her eyes at the fire and her voice was so much softer (right in Cricket O'Malley's ear so that no campers could overhear what she was about to say, "It wasn't me, was it?"

He wasn't sure how to lower his voice (he had always been really bad at whispering, he grew up in a loud house and he always had to yell over the fields to make sure he hadn't lost his younger siblings), so he just slowly shook his head. Slow enough so that no one would see it, but emphatic enough that Delphinium would feel it. 

She let out a rough hum, smushing her cheek up against his shoulder, "Well, she's gone now, ain't she? We're all seen and we're all happy, she can't touch us right now." Delphinium wrapped her arm around his shoulders and squeezed his bicep, letting her squared off nails gently scratch at his skin. Not enough to hurt or to make anything other than a paled line across his skin, but enough for him to feel it, "I can stop by your cabin if you don't want to be alone, it's not like we're anywhere near the campers."

Cricket O'Malley huffed, shouldering at Delphinium and rolling his eyes, "You're bad, but...I don't want to be alone tonight. Hell, I don't even think I'd be able to sleep without someone there or without being just completely lit on fire. And as much as I know it would enthuse Charm, I'm not looking for any fire-related deaths to happen." His gaze unwillingly slid to the entrance to the amphitheater, and the unspoken 'and no freezing related deaths either' was understood by both of them. 

"Then I'll stop by later tonight, and if I have to I'll chain you to the bedpost so you can't make yourself leave and follow after whoever she is," Delphinium said everything like it was a finality, like she had just spoken the plan into existence. That everyone would just fall in line behind her words and she'd lead them wherever she desired and no one could say anything. A king with no kingdom and no army to lead but she could. And Cricket O'Malley would be the first in line to join her, to get on his knees and get knighted for her. But that was not here, that was not now. What was here and now were the cheers and whoops of campers as they got more and more daring (getting closer and closer to the fire and getting more and more physical), and well. They had their duties to set up.

Cricket O'Malley patted Delphinium on the hand before moving to stand up. Adjusting his guitar strap across his body as he clapped his hands in a set rhythm, and waited for a response. It took three times (it always took a few times, but never had the kids been rowdy for more than four attempts), but soon enough to kids were looking up at him with wide eyes and he grinned at all of them, "Alright, tonight was fun, but tomorrow's going to be better! And if we want that better tomorrow then we're going to have to get a good night's sleep tonight, ain't that right?"

There were groans and whines and shouts of 'it'll be good no matter what!', but the campers were all smart enough to start lining up for their cabin counselors-in-training to take them to the showers and then to the cabins. It took another twenty minutes at least, of corralling the campers into their lines and making sure that they didn't run off into the woods. Once the amphitheater was empty and it was just him, Delphi, and Anna Arachne Aberdeen (he always used vir full name since vi never seemed to use his). 

"You all saw the lady too, right?" Vir voice was soft but it almost echoed in the empty place. Vir eyes caught the glinting embers of the flame, making the right one (which was blue and had a slightly deformed pupil from something that Anna Arachne never told him about) glisten like vi was about to cry. The left one (almost entirely black, the pupil having encompassed the iris already and slowly encroaching on the sclera in a way that was reminiscent of ink spilling into water) sparkled and seemed almost fathomless. "Or was that just another of my...eye thing," Vir hand, just as scared as all of theirs, flicked next to vir left eye.

"No, no, I saw her too. I'm honestly glad that you also saw her, makes me feel like it wasn't a targeted thing," And oh they had all had their fair share of targeted things. Things that they could only really handle on their own and that the others just had to hope that the person would come out on top. A few times, it was hit or miss, and three times (three times there used to be so many more of them here, more of the leaders of the camp but now it was just three), three times it was a miss. "We should light some candles, or those weird electric candles if we're really all that concerned about fire safety. Something that's at least a little fire related, or warmth related."

"I have a heated blanket, it's like a comforter so we could all come to my cabin," Anna Arachne had the largest cabin, considering that she lived in the big house where they kept everything that could be necessary or needed storage. It was messy and cluttered, but there was a little living room area with couches and chairs and a place for them to stay. Cricket O'Malley always found it a little silly, to have somewhere where the campers couldn't get to that was just for the counselors. But now it was unspeakably important. With both him and Anna Arachne having seen Frau Faste, there was a note of specific danger that there hadn't been before.

And though their campers were always their first responsibility, it was at the point that them being away from the campers was the safest move. Frau Faste never seemed to mind collateral as long as she got what she wanted, or at least that's what their parent told them about her. About how the Lady in the Woods would choose Favorites and decide to spirit them away and vanish them. How they would expect, at the end of a summer where they failed and someone had been taken, to have to explain to parents where their child was, but they never did. No parents ever came for the Forgotten child, and Junebug only knew that the child existed in the first place due to logs and promises made.

"So, this is a little fun, isn't it?" Delphinium laughed out (trying harder than most would to lighten the mood, if it wasn't for the cold that was burning into his veins). She snuggled up against Cricket O'Malley, pressing her face into his neck as she draped herself over him. "It's like a little sleepover, isn't it?"

"Ah yes, because every sleepover is only composed because two of the participants are worried about a freezing lady coming while we sleep and spiriting us away like it's the worst version of a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale." And there was Anna Arachne, always there to drag down the mood and remind everyone of the real issue at hand. A cloud over the sun was both vir gender and how vi enters every conversation. "But we should be safe enough here, it's going to be a hot one so maybe the blankets will be too much. But I think that we'd need to figure it out whether or not the heat is going to be worth it."

"If it means I'm not going to be getting turned into an ice cube, then I'll take waking up all sweaty and gross," Cricket rolled his eyes, wrapping an arm around Delphinium's waist and tugging her into a tighter hug. "Plus there's always body heat, so that would be a pretty easy way to ward Dolores off."

"Why do we even call her Dolores...ooh, do you think that was her human name?" Delphi let herself get pulled into Cricket, shifting slightly to sit on his lap and cuddle up further into him, "I mean, I know she's apart of the Strangeness that affects this place, but do you think that means she could never have once been a human?"

Arachne Aberdeen paused at that, still half bent over in the process of plugging in one of the four space heaters that vi had brought out of the attic, "Huh. Y'know I never actually thought about it like that, I just knew the name Dolores from the Crafter that I worked under. I think they were one of the few Favorites that she had failed to make Forgotten, considering how affectionately they talked about her. Maybe Dolores is her actual name."

"I mean, could this be a woman in white situation? Full on grieving mother who's constantly looking for her children?" Cricket O'Malley fiddled with his girlfriend's hair, nudging her into sitting on the ground in front of him so he could braid her hair. He always loved playing with her hair, it reminded him of being younger and having to take care of his sister's hair when his parent was busy working in the fields.

"I mean, I don't know about that. It wasn't that sort of affection that they spoke about her with...if you get my drift," Anna Arachne let out a nervous sort of laugh as vi began to arrange the space heaters in the right direction so that they were all focused on the old mattress that Cricket O'Malley had dragged out into the room. They couldn't all comfortably fit on the couch after all, especially since it wasn't a sofa bed, so he had been tasked with dragging the beaten up mattress from one of the bedrooms. "It was like, full on romance, I think that Dolores was always going to be their one that got away and that's just-"

"-That's just messy, imagine being in love with a murder ghost. Like imagine growing up and leaving camp and getting married-"

"-I don't think they actually ever got married, which is rather sad isn't it? Because I know that they knew that it was for the best that they weren't allowed to be forgotten, but I think they were always a little bit peeved that they weren't allowed to go with her." Anna Arachne finished up with the space heaters and moved to arrange the blankets on the full sized mattress. It was going to be a rather tight fit, but it was going to be a lot better than just being on the couch all piled on top of one another.

"Oh...wow that's less messy and more sad," Delphinium toyed with the head of her axe, surprisingly gently with the barbed wire as she began to arrange the barbed wire further, "Imagine having your biggest and only love be a woman whose final goal is to make everyone forget about you so that only she can have you." A little shiver stole down her back, and Cricket O'Malley rubbed her shoulders with his warm, calloused hands. "I'm glad you got out of there, babe." Delphinium rested her hand on top of his, and craned her head back to stare up at him.

"Yeah, so am I." His voice was rough and rumbling as he smiled down at her. Still, he could almost see why that old Crafter (if he's right about this timeline, the crafter's name had been Rorrim) had sought after her for so long. Not entirely, after all Cricket O'Malley was firmly and permanently (in the way that all mid-twenty feelings were permanent) in love with Delphinium Abrus. As lonely as she described herself to be when they had met, Cricket O'Malley was always going to be by her side. And not even the lady with a house that was so familiar and different than what he remembered and the way that she seemed to want him to be so comfortable and-

"Cricket O'Malley," Anna Arachne Aberdeen using his full name shocked him out of the almost trance that he had gotten into.

As Cricket raised his hand to pull it through his hair, it came away wet with melted frost, and as he looked up he noticed that somehow Delphinium had moved out of his hands in order to cup his chin with her hand, "You zoned out for a good five minutes there, we thought it was just stress when you started frosting over. I think we should stop talking about the woman, this doesn't seem to be a good thing or something we want happening again. So, I'm banning it right now: no frost woman talk."

"Right, yeah, no that sounds like a good idea," He had to shake his head again, trying to snap himself out of whatever hold that Frau might've still had on him. What he didn't think about was the dangers of the fact that while yes his name was never to be abbreviated (never in any serious sense he had been Cricket O'Malley for almost his entire life and that name was needed to set him apart when he went to school with his siblings), there was some danger in that. Danger that he knew of when he took it, but he had never really taken it seriously. He didn't connect the frost on his skin with the fact that Frau might be listening. "Okay, what should the topic be?"

"Oh, I could talk about the poisonous plants that I pulled out of the woods the other day when I was making my rounds," Delphinium looked so excited (and lovely, Cricket O'Malley always figured she looked the most lovely when she was excited and happy about things and he could never allow himself to decline her anything) as she perked up. The axe with barbed wire (with two flowers carved into the base: larkspur and rosary pea) lay by the head of the bed, not forgotten but it was ignored for the moment. The rounds that she was talking about was when she would trek out the most used paths in the woods and check for any plants that could harm the kids. Poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, all of the poisons that could be in the woods and contracted with a touch. She was pretty thankful that the camp was mainly ten and up, otherwise she'd have to make sure there was nothing that was poisonous to eat.

"That sounds nice, actually, please tell me more about what you've found," He got up off of the couch, pacing slightly in order to try to work through the ice inside of his veins. There seemed to be a constant chill to him now, and he grabbed one of the blankets that lay on the bed and wrapped it around his shoulders. It reminded him of when he was a child and he pretended to go on adventures with a blanket as a cape. Simpler times, but he pulled himself out of the past and rubbed his arms.

"Uh- okay so the really interesting thing is that there was some poison oak that was wrapping around the tree that's like, just a bit off the big fork in the forest? Like where the hiking trails split off into the shorter and the longer one? Yeah so the tree that's like three trees behind the sign that's there was like, almost engulfed in the stuff and I had to go back to the cabins to grab my gloves. Because yeah of course I had my axe with me, but that didn't mean that I could just get the poison oak out of there without the gloves. So I pulled on my gloves and this huge fucking spider crawled out of one and so I almost lost it when it was crawling down my arm and I had to just calm myself down and make sure it didn't go down my boot. Because like I'm not some asshole, I know that this isn't really my deal and that the woods are all about nature and stuff, so I didn't like want to squash it. Anyway so I had to chop and hack the poison stuff off of the oak and it was really annoying to have to carry out of the woods without getting any of it on my clothes and my hands."

The talking helped, it always helped to right Cricket O'Malley's mind and away from his troubles and away from the ice that's in his veins. Even though Delphinium could ramble with the best of them, he had been so used to her voice that everything was relaxing. Delphinium was never boring, she had never bored him no matter what topic she was talking about. It was a rock in the storm that was around him (was it better to call it a snow storm?), and Cricket O'Malley was more and more grounded as he listened. The pacing was also helping, it helped to pace and walk and work out a little bit. 

"Babe? I'm listening but also do you mind being a weight for me?" Cricket O'Malley just barely interrupted the next half of her story, something with some poison ivy that was in the middle of a raspberry bush, and dropped into a plank position. That was another thing that he had often done, the best way to get his mind off of things was to do something physical., it was a lot easier for him to focus on something when someone was on him and helping him focus on the now. Delphinium just laughed a little and moved to lay on top of him.

"You're a loon, Cricket O'Malley," She laughed out, leaning to run her fingers through Cricket O'Malley's curls as she laid across his back, "But yeah, I had to get the poison ivy out of the pricker bush because you know these kids, they love picking their own food and the leaves do a lot like the other. So I had to go back to the cabins so that I could grab the elbow length gloves and my bigger muck boots so that I didn't have to worry about dealing with poison ivy on my hands and that way I didn't have to like constant make sure that I'm not touching anyone and I'm not spreading a ton of poison ivy everywhere because that stuff sucks."

"You two are weird and disgusting and it is extremely hard to look away from you both." Anna Arachne Aberdeen (who Cricket had forgotten was there with how silent vi had become) scoffed as vi moved to sit down on the bed. Vi began to arrange the blankets on top of each other, laying them on top of each other and Cricket knew that the furry blankets were going to be a heat trap. A blessing and a curse because it was already getting hot in the living room thanks to the four space heaters.

"Boo, don't be homophobic!" Delphinium laughed out, even with the understanding that they're all gay. 

"I'm not homophobic, you're just extremely strange," Anna Arachne huffed, crossing vir arms over vir chest as vi drummed on the sides of vir arms. "But whatever, if you have to do this to be warm, then whatever. I will make do with the blankets and the space heaters and you can keep yourself warm with whatever this whole ritual is. Because it's obvious that you've done this before."

"Maybe so, why, do you want to jump up on here too?" Cricket O'Malley chuckled out, almost a grunt honestly, as he continued to bang out the pushups.

"God no, like I said I will make do with the blankets, I want no part of this," But there was the hint of a laugh in vir voice before the lights flickered.

They steadied out, and before they could even breath a sigh of relief, the power cut out. Plunging the room into darkness as the heaters cut off.

"Guys?" Cricket O'Malley's voice was getting shaky as he realized that he could no longer feel the weight of Delphinium on his back.

"Oh you don't need to worry about any of them anymore," came a lilting, freezing voice from his left.


	2. Chapter 2

The voice made him freeze, both literally and figuratively. It worsened the ice that had been building up in his veins and it made him shiver, even with the heat that he had previously felt. That heat had long since fled, and Cricket O'Malley just barely pushed himself out of the pushup position. He couldn't see much, the lights were all off and it had already gotten quite late into the night so there was nothing from outside. Their guitar was somewhere far off, some place that he couldn't grab and he felt like a limb was missing.

But just because he didn't have his limb, didn't mean that he was defenseless. Cricket O'Malley fumbled blindly, reaching out and feeling around the edge of the mattress to find Delphinium's axe. It was just where she left it, but it was a painful sort of freezing. The wood handle seemed almost frozen solid, and whenever he adjusted his grip, his skin stuck to the surface. But he could trace his fingers down the handle and he could feel the indentations of the carvings. Feel where the two poisonous plants that never quite described her were carved into the handle (he had been there when she worked them in, all of the curses and cut fingers and smoothing of sandpaper over the handle and the finishing), and feel where the little dents were from accidents.

It was familiar, and safe and it was warming against his hands. This wasn't something that the Frau could take from him, this was his and hers (not that Her, it was Delphinium's through and through from the barbed wire wrapped around the head to the imperfections to the carvings). "What did you do to my friends?" His voice was panted out as he pushed him to stand, leaning against the axe as if it was a cane. Though he couldn't see anything (horrifying, Cricket O'Malley was so used to sight that without it, he felt weak).

"Like I said, you don't have to worry about them anymore." Dolores' voice was soft and sounded like it was right behind him.

Cricket O'Malley whirled around, the axe in both hands now and aimed to cut. He wasn't good with it, but he figured he didn't exactly need practiced to use it. He had seen Delphinium cut wood enough times with it to understand that you needed a whole lot of force, "I think I do. Now answer me, _Dolores_."

"Ohh, so you know of that name?" Frozen fingers trailed over Cricket O'Malley's shoulders, making him stiffen up as her hands landed on his hips, "Use that for me, it's so much more personal than just calling me Your Lady. Even if that one also fits, Dolores is just so much more personal." There was a snap of fingers, right next to his ears, and lights exploded across his vision.

It was like snowblindness, bright and flashing and he almost lost his grip on the axe as his hand flew up to cover his eyes. As he blinked the spots out of his vision, the room slowly came into focus, and it was the same horrifyingly familiar unfamiliar room of the cabin's kitchen. The same picture frames on the wall (no pictures inside of them, just frosted over glass), the same chair and tables (perfect, like they just came out of a box there were no stains or cuts or carvings), same tiles on the ground and same paint on the walls.

The only thing out of place (aside from the perfectness that was never there when Cricket O'Malley was in the real version), was the woman at the sink. It wasn't Junebug (nothing like zir in fact, too tall and thin and frail looking and the stole around her shoulders was more expensive than Junebug had ever found worth buying), but that didn't mean it wasn't familiar. "Like I said, you don't have to worry about them anymore. You're my favorite, don't you know that?" She turned around, a wide grin on her pale blue lips, "You've always been my favorite, Cricket O'Malley. And yes that parent of yours was a rather rough go, but that's all in the past now. So many things are in the past, all frozen by time and never to be changed again!" She let out a trilling laugh (like a bird call, a bird call that Cricket O'Malley remembered hearing when he was so much younger than now and playing in the woods while his parent worked), and reached to pat his cheek. "Don't you want to be like the past?"

Cricket O'Malley cringed away from the cold hand on his cheek, squeezing that eye shut as he leaned away from her. "No, I don't. People aren't supposed to be frozen, that ain't how any of this works." He felt the wood of the table dig against his back as he slowly shifted along the curve. Edging further and further away from Dolores, he narrowed his eyes at her, "I want to be nice and unfrozen and I would really enjoy it if you didn't fucking keep me away from my friends."

"Oh, darling..." Dolores clucked her tongue, shaking her head like she was a disappointed parent, "Don't you remember what happened last time you ran away to find your friends? What was kis name again? Ah, right, Jonathan wasn't it? Oh, key was such a newbie, you should've known better than to leave kim alone!" Another chiming laugh that sounded like ice cracking underfoot.

The reminder hit him like a truck to the chest. Jonathan, another one of their band that had long been lost to them. It had been a few years (not enough to forget about it, there was no time enough for forget about key), and the memory still haunted Junebug to this day. He always knew that the camp was dangerous, and that if people didn't keep their eyes up they would get hurt. But Jonathan lived with kis head in the clouds and key never took any of his warning songs seriously. Jonathan loved and laughed and lived without regret and without holding anything back, and key died like that too.

"Don't you remember? Wouldn't it be nice to put all of this behind you?" The words were almost sung out and Cricket O'Malley could feel rather than see her smile, "Wouldn't it be so much easier to let sleeping dogs lie and be nice and safe? All tucked up under the snow, no rot or decay or change coming to you?" He could feel a freezing hand wrap around his wrist and all he could think about was the story his parent told him about the second time ze had fought the lady. The hand in the lake, covered in rings and heavy and refusing to come off of [someone's name, why is he drawing a blank] hand. The fog and the missing Counselor in training, the lake that was only safe because of one person. The fights and the drama and how tired ze had gotten partway through and how ze had to carry on.

_"I'll remember you,"_ Ze had told him, but he wasn't sure how correct that was. What was Junebug to magic, to strangeness? Cricket O'Malley remembered all the tales of forgotten kids, only carried on by their names in log books and stuck on stickers and clothes that had no owner. He didn't want to be one of those, a reason that Junebug would stare at a messy room and wonder who's mess this was. A reason for Delphinium to wonder who sang the song that was stuck in her head.

"No, it wouldn't be." With the brightness of the room, he could see that his breath came out in steaming pants. Clouds of smoke rising out of his mouth and covering his line of sight briefly. "Because that's not how this works, that's now how humans are supposed to work. Change isn't a bad thing, no change means stagnation." He shivered, the cold getting to him a little bit. His fingers were going numb, wriggling his toes felt like trying to wriggle nothing, and his ears were burning. His hands rubbed, in that odd clumsy way when they lost feeling, at his shoulders, trying to generate warmth. His fingers were clumsy, feeling like they were frozen solid and able to snap off (the intrusive thought hit him as he was met with the similarities between the sound of ice cracking and bones breaking). His feet felt like blocks of ice in his shoes, even though he knew that he had specifically chosen to put on fuzzy socks to try to insulate himself. The tips of his ears were burning from the cold, numb and painful as he tried to keep himself warm.

"But wouldn't you like to forget what you saw that night?" Her voice was almost eager, and she took a step towards him with her arms outstretched. Her very presence was freezing, waving in a winter's breeze and making him shudder. Cricket O'Malley never did well in the cold, it always hurt and it always made him rush inside the second his nose got red. Dolores hummed and moved closer, cupping his face with her ice cold hands, "Wouldn't it be nice to put that all behind you?"

And with that, Cricket O'Malley was thrust into the past. The memory of the night would never leave him (and he couldn't, he wouldn't forget Jonathan that would be doing kim a disservice). It had been painfully hot that night, hot enough that all the windows in all the cabins were opened to help with cross breezes. It was Jonathan's first year as a proper counselor, and key was determined to do it correctly. And that night, doing it correctly meant venturing out into the woods at night (why did he let him go why did no one go with him) to get someone's forgotten bag. It had been a calm year, they had been so close to the end of the session with no incidents.

It had been too good to be true, as all calm things were. It had been an hour, maybe two (too long, why hadn't anyone asked sooner), since Jonathan had left for the woods. Too long for what key was trying to do, too long to try to reason out a plausible way that they had gotten delayed. Cricket O'Malley had decided to go to find kim, alone (he could've died to, he could've been killed alongside him and where would the camp be?), and set out into the woods with only his guitar and an axe. There was howling, he could hear them howling and his heartbeat quickened into a rabbit's pace. It was easy to feel like a prey animal with the howling in the distance, baying of hounds almost like the wolves of the Hunt (the ones in the stories that Junebug would tell him right before bed to scare him off of doing something stupid).

The wolves were rare, but they always made their presence known. This was unheard of, for them to not know that they were here until this late in the summer. But as Cricket O'Malley ran through the words, the signs that all of them had so conveniently ignore. The fights that came much too easily and were broken up just as fast. The long shadows on the cabin walls when there wasn't any source. The tufts of white fur caught on berry bushes that everyone just picked off and tossed into the wind. They should've known, they all should've known.

And it was too late when Cricket O'Malley came into the clearing. It was always too late, that's how every story goes with the Wolves. There is no avoiding them, not completely, there is only saving yourself and trying to not be prey. There was one last hint of them, a last of the pack standing on the rock above Jonathan's body. Horrifying and not-a-wolf and took horrifying for Cricket's mind to properly consider. Too big mouths that opened too wide to slobber something viscous and black down on the broken body (he was young key was only twenty key was only twenty why did they let kim go alone?). The head that was only a bare skull, blank eyes and perfectly clean (aside from the blood on the mouth on the fur on the rocks on the body on the grass). The jawbone hung loose and gaping, something slick and black (a tongue? why does that thing's tongue look like that) coiled in the hollow of it. It howled, up to the moon (it was full, Cricket O'Malley had that burned into his brain it was a full moon and they let kim go alone into the woods), and it was answered by the pack.

And then it left. It left Cricket O'Malley to pick up Jonathan's broken bloodied body and carry it back to the main hall. Not to the cabins they couldn't let the kids see this, and they all had to decide what happened to kim. Wolf attack, wild animal that was put down, accident, a fall. Something that was mundane, horrible enough to explain the corpse but normal enough so that no one shut down the camp (why were they all so concerned with keeping the camp alive, what depended on this camp?).

The cold fingers on his neck drew him back to the present, and with it a void formed in his mind. A black hole of memory, like an abscessed tooth. There was something there, or something that had used to be there (was supposed to be there, what was he missing?) and it hurt to poke at it. It hurt to try to remember (should he stop trying to remember? was it worth it to forget?), like frostbite, like touching something too cold for him to bear.

"Isn't this easier? Isn't this so much better, Cricket O'Malley?" Dolores' voice was purring and low in his ear as she pressed up against him. Cold against his back like he went outside with no scarf, a chin tucked over his shoulder, "Don't you want to stay? Aren't you hungry, do you want to eat?" The change of subject sent him through a loop, briefly distracting him from the gap in his memory (what was there what were they talking about what had he remembered and then forgotten).

"What?" It wasn't the most cohesive question, but Cricket O'Malley couldn't be bothered to get something better out. The cold was numbing him, making him squeeze and flex his hands to try to get some blood flowing through them.

"Aren't you hungry? Or thirsty? I have tea, I could cook you something. It's about time someone takes care of you," The voice reminded him of someone, someone who was bigger and warmer and louder and-

Cricket O'Malley squeezed his eyes shut and counted to three. His parent, this woman had reminded him of his parent (Junebug zir name was Junebug but she didn't know that Cricket O'Malley can't let her know that) for a brief moment. It was horrifying, and he tried to explain it away as some sort of trick of hers. That it was just the tone and the kitchen and the gap in his memory that was playing with him. But he couldn't. Their mannerisms were a little too similar, though they were so very different.

"Darling, you've zoned out!" The word was charming and light and affectionate (why so affectionate, Cricket O'Malley didn't know her this wasn't anything there wasn't anything here), and she gently began to lead him to sit down at the table. The chair was perfect, no chips or dents or scraps and it glided across the tile (it left a trail through the frost covering the floor, why was there frost everywhere). "Here, have some tea."

The cup of tea was burning in his hands, painfully hot but it was a good sort of burn. Steam spiraled out of the cup and it was cocoa (made with milk not water and he can't remember how he knows that), hot and fresh. "Why are you acting like my mom? You're not. I already have a parent and ze isn't you." Cricket O'Malley felt like a child protesting that, but it was fitting. The uncanny valley of being coddled like a child was chafing against the hole in his mind.

"Oh, but I could've been," Dolores' smile was almost sad, but still remained frozen and cheery. Cricket O'Malley didn't understand what she meant, but things slowly started to unravel. How much Junebug knew about her, how Junebug knew the name Dolores and how Junebug told him how to protect himself. The way that ze only talked about how the others in zir group dealt with the lady and never how ze zirself did. The picture was slotting into place and Cricket O'Malley felt-

Cricket O'Malley felt something go wrong. Like a thread holding him up had snapped, and now he was dangling above some sort of precipice with only a few things tethering him to safety. It was an extreme sense of vertigo, something dizzying and sickening like he was standing on a balance beam too high up. The cup in his hand shook with his grip and he spilled it over the table. But it barely poured, the cocoa slowed to a stop and froze right on the table.

Dolores clucked his tongue, shaking her head in disappointment as she flicked her hand. The cocoa was sent back in time, crawling back into the mug as she took it and put it in the sink, "Oh, darling, seems like your friends aren't as strong willed as you." It was casually hummed out, like it was a statement about the weather or something that was common knowledge.

A chunk of ice lodged into his gut, like someone had punched him hard and left him with an icepack, "What the fuck does that mean?"

"Language, dear!" Dolores chided as she swept back to sit in the chair across from him, her mink stole chittering and squirming on her shoulders, "I just mean that they aren't trying as hard as you were to keep you in their thoughts. It's a shame, I know that you're trying so very hard to keep your memories to yourself, but you should know that they aren't giving you the same courtesy. Which I find ridiculous, you are very hard to forget after all. Just like that parent of yours." Her eyes glittered under the light, and she stirred her silver spoon in her glass. The clink was steady and constant as a heartbeat, making it hard to focus on the memories that were swirling inside of his heard and easier to fall asleep.

When had he gotten so tired? Yes it was late at night, but he should know better. He should've known better about a lot of things, but this is what he was. Delicate and susceptiable to cold and he was hoping against all odds that for once Anna Arachne Aberdeen (full name, he knows that vi never used his so he'll always use virs) was wrong with vir runetelling. He dug the frozen nails of his fingertips into his palms, reminding him of the pain and trying to shock himself awake. He reminded himself about how falling asleep was the worst thing to do in the cold, how it was so easy for your body to drift away when you're too numb to feel it. Falling asleep and never waking up, he doesn't want that does he? Does he?

The chiming drew him back in and he bit down harsh enough on his lower lip to break skin. Blood, not much but enough to shock him with the warmth, dripped down his chin and onto the tabletop. It froze on contact, glazing over and darkening down. Cricket O'Malley swiped his tongue over his lip to clean it up.

"Wouldn't it be easier to set this all behind us and more on?" Frau Faste crooned out, reaching over the table to pat his chin clean, and again Cricket O'Malley was thrust into the past.

It was so long ago, much longer than [REDACTED] had been. Cricket O'Malley was a child, not even old enough to go to Camp Thunderclap (Camp Snakebite it had been Snakebite back then), and he had ran face first into a pole while playing outside with his younger siblings. Mary-Alice had been whining about not being able to play ball with him and Cam (short for Cameron but they tell everyone it's short for Camera), and they had all decided to play monkey in the middle. Cricket O'Malley (he was just Cricket back then, hadn't yet decided that he was going to always been everything that he was at once) was running to catch the ball and keep it out of his sister's hands and he had ran straight into the pole on the porch.

His parent was in the middle of working on some papers (taxes? it had been almost a decade since the memory but Cricket felt like it could've been taxes), so when ze heard the all too familiar wails of zir kid in pain, ze came. Bursting out the front door with zir hand reaching for the bat they keep by the door ("to protect us against strangers, raccoons, and missionaries" Junebug always said), before seeing that zir kid was in pain because of his own stupid decision. But Junebug was a good person, and a better parent, and it didn't matter to zir why zir kid was in pain. All that mattered was keeping them out of it.

And because Junebug was strong and Cricket was small, ze swept him up into zir arms and placed him on the kitchen counter. His nose wasn't broken, not anywhere close, but it was bleeding and snotty in that unique little kid way. So Junebug grabbed a few paper towels and began to pat him dry, even as he winced and wriggled whenever ze patted a little too hard on his nose. Under zir breath, just loud enough for the two of them to hear over the squeals and laughs of his siblings, ze started to sing. It was fuzzy and hazy, but Cricket O'Malley could never-

Could never-

He can't remember the song that ze was singing.

He should be able to, it wasn't a unique song it was one of Junebug's favorites. It was what ze sang at any chance and any excuse. Cleaning, cooking, working, doing their hair, driving them around, working in the field. Cricket O'Malley should know the song, he should be able to recall the words or the tune or the theme but there was nothing. Just a rotting abscess of memory where something pristine used to be. A black hole, a vacuum, something that used to be filled but was now uncomfortably empty.

The clink of a spoon against china brought him back, and he felt closer to the edge. Suspended by only a few more threads and so very close to falling, Cricket O'Malley was nauseous from the vertigo of the feeling. There wasn't a lot left keeping him safe and he knew that, it was horrifying to know but it was getting harder and harder for him to remember why he was so horrified at the thought of leaving it all behind.

A thread snapped, and Cricket O'Malley felt ice in his veins again.

"I can't-" The words were almost breathed out and he tried to stand up from the frozen chair. His pants stuck to it before he forced himself further up, "As nice as it would be to...to..." Cricket (did he have anything else to him? was there more to what he was?) stumbled out of his chair and his hand lashed out to support himself on the wall. It was freezing to the touch and weak (like a push or a punch could break through it, like it was all just paper set up around him nothing like the real deal) underneath his hand. "As...I can't..."

"You can't _what_ , Cricket?" There was nothing else after the name, there was something missing. A black hole, a vacuum, an abscess. Something was missing and it was hurting to try to call it up. Hurting like frostbite, like touching ice and getting your tongue stuck to a pole and having to rip it off. Like having to carry a bag of ice all the way back to the cooler because you forgot to bring it and now it's too far away and the ice is melting and it burns.

"I can't remember-" The words were gasped out and he sagged against the wall. He couldn't remember, not his name not who this woman was (who he was, who was he and what is missing). But he could remember the lack of things. He knew what he didn't know and that fact hurt his brain (empty, voided out redacted like someone had taken a black marker and scribbled out things) to comprehend. Cricket's breathing came in pants and he could see figures dancing in the smoke of his breath (that wasn't normal there was something not-normal about his life but this wasn't it).

"I know, isn't it wonderful?" The woman (Dolores, he didn't know where the name came from but he knew it was hers), "Isn't it so nice to have put it all behind you?" The question was almost rhetorical, but Cricket shook his head.

"No- no. It hurts- It- hurts." And it did, a headache and a toothache and every sort of ache that a body could have all wrapped into one. Humans were not supposed to have voided out memories and blanks where there should be an experience. Cricket stared at the wall underneath his hand, feeling the falseness and the paper thin feeling of the entire wall, and he noticed that his fingertips had started to turn grey-blue. Frostbite. He couldn't remember what to do for frostbite other than immediate warmth was bad and could worsen things. He also knew that having blue-grey fingertips wasn't a good thing.

"But it's a good-" Dolores tried, getting up and almost moving around but Cricket through out his hand to stop her.

"No, it's not. I- I can't. I can't forget." He knows that he's forgotten a loss, forgotten something that reminded him of his parent. Cricket knows that those sorts of things shape you, and that to take them away is to leave someone unmoored. Unmoored that exactly what he felt like, like he was stuck on a canoe and floating out to the lake uselessly holding the end of a rope that was supposed to be tied to a moor. "As pleasant as it might be, I can't forget." His fingers were numb, there wasn't even the pain of the cold anymore (another bad sign, he knew enough to remember that for it to hurt the nerves still have to be healthy).

"Yes you can, Cricket. You can and you have, do you even know what you've lost?" Dolores seemed almost smug, like she had won something and won something more than just him. Cricket (there was something that was supposed to follow that name he knew that) knew that this was about something so much bigger than just him. That he was just some sort of pawn in a game of chess that she was playing with his parent. A long held grudge that had weathered winter after winter after summer after summer after winter, something that went back too long for Cricket to even realize.

It infuriated him. It was infuriating to realize that he was being used to get back at his mother, and he grasped onto that rage with both numb hands. His ears must be in the same condition as his fingers, all grey-blue and dead, but he couldn't worry about that right now. The rage in his hands (being used being a pawn being tricked and how close he had let himself get to being lost in the snow) was supernova hot, something that got his blood boiling (maybe figuratively maybe literally but it did a good job of chasing away the ice in his veins).

Memories began to flood back, unbidden but welcome into the gaps that they slotted perfectly into. Cricket (O'Malley) remembered finding Jonathan's body, remembered the Wolves and the howls and feeling like prey (he didn't feel like prey right now, he felt sharp and jagged and more like thorns than a blossom). Remembered the blood and the slobber and the stench of death that always came with newly dead bodies (he had dated a mortician before Delphinium, he knew the stages of death well enough from her rants). He remembered being unable to break eye contact with the wolf (the empty eye sockets and the too long too dark tongue coiled inside of the skull) until the wolf did it first. How it felt when the howl picked up, the knowledge that he was surrounded and if Jonathan hadn't already been killed he would've been dead meat.

It was raw and anger and Cricket O'Malley could've let out a howl of his own (a scream like a freight train, unavoidable and a warning) as the grief of loss hit him again. The feeling of knowing what he lost and knowing how he had lost it all over again, even years later, still hit him in the chest. But it didn't bowl him over like it used to, it wasn't drowning and even if it was Cricket O'Malley felt his head stay above water. His grief wasn't enough this time, not enough to drown him and not even enough to make him regret remembering.

Cricket O'Malley hissed, finding it hard to force his legs to move with his mind and carry him towards the door. It hurt, every step was on almost numb feet that were begging for relief. Begging for him to just sit down and let himself get carried away by the cold numbness that had overtaken his hands and his ears. There was the whistling of a winter wind, though Cricket O'Malley couldn't feel it (whether that was because it was just his ears not working or his body not registering the cold, he couldn't tell), and he continued to pound out the steps. His eyes were focused on the shut door, and he reminded himself about just how fake this entire place is. How the picture frames were frosted over for a reason, that there was no room for imperfections in this house (and humans were full of imperfections, there was no room for him in this house). How it was just a mimicry of everything he already had.

"Cricket!" Dolores' voice was tight and almost nervous (good, she should be nervous, she should know that she's about to lose the battle and the war) as she clapped her hands together to try to draw his attention away from his target, "Dear, where are you going? I was just about to put your favorite dish in the oven, and you still haven't finished your cocoa!" Now with a clearer, and warmer, mind, Cricket O'Malley found it ridiculous that he ever fell for her tricks. How did he ever fall for her imprecise promises and grand gestures that could be applied to everyone. How everything she had tried to promise him, he already had.

He already had the attention he needed, the home he needed and the love that he needed. And that love, that home, that attention was freely given and returned without any cost. There was no memory price tag or numbness involved. "No, you weren't. And I spilled the cocoa, you're a horrible liar." The words were bit out as he continued to trudge towards the door (it seemed to stay the same distance away and oh how annoying that was).

"Don't be silly, you didn't spill anything and the dish is on the stove," The words were fluttered out and Cricket O'Malley could hear footsteps behind him and he tried his best to speed up.

The fire in his chest guttered before he remembered again. Remembered sitting on the kitchen table in annoyed pain as his parent cared for him even as he wriggled around and tried to get back to the game. The song that ze was singing was back in his head, and it was free and fun. While it wasn't one of his songs (not one of the haunting ones or the lilting ones or the full ones), it was zirs, and ze gave it to him with no expectation. So it worked enough as Cricket O'Malley began to sing it underneath his breath.

The tempo was off (though he knew it), the tune was off (though he knew that as well), but it worked. It was faster, angrier, the words being spit out as he finally started to make progress towards the door. He could hear the crunch of frost underneath his shoes and he didn't bother to look down to know that he had crossed through the living room. The words of the Lady were just wind in his ears, background noise that was bothersome and annoying and something to be ignored.

His breath still came in pants of cold air, but he didn't mind as he sang through it. The song was angrier than how Junebug sang it, but that settled well with him now. He was angrier, the fire in his chest was an inferno that was burning away all of the ice that the Lady Oubliette (that was her title, that was the strangeness, she was the one who froze over the lake three years ago) had placed there. Anger came easily to him, it was easier to be angry rather than bereaved when the memories of all the good times he had with Jonathan rose to his mind.

His hand landed on the door, apparently frozen solid, and he grunted as he took a step back. Not to go back (not like the Lady thought if the pleased rumble in his ear was any indication), of course not. He was far past the point that the Lady could ever reach him again. No, Cricket O'Malley backed up just enough to swing his slowly waking up leg up hard enough to slam the door open. The warm summer wind flew in, making him almost scream out at the temperature change.

Dolores also screamed, harsh and wailing like truck wheels on an icy bridge, and the cabin began to collapse. Just as flimsy and as fake as Cricket O'Malley had felt it was, and he pushed past the boundary of the doorway. The air was almost unbearably hot around him, making every second increasingly more and more painful as the cabin behind him collapsed in on itself. Leaving only a perfect square of no foliage or grass or anything but quickly melting snow. Cricket O'Malley took another step in the real, warm world, and cried out louder in pain.

His vision blurred and he leaned against a tree, grimacing at the pain of the bark biting into his palm. His hand slid down, and he fell with it, landing on his back on the ground looking up at the blue sky (wasn't it night before, how long had he been missing). There was a bloody hand print on the tree that he had used to support himself, and as he raised his hand (with so much effort, it hurt so much) he could see that the palm had been rubbed red and bloody.

But it was getting harder and harder to see at this point, and Cricket O'Malley just barely heard the crunch of leaves behind him before his vision went sideways and everything went black.

* * *

Waking up felt like trying to pry his eyelids open with a crowbar, but he did it. His head pounded and as he raised his hand up to touch it, he noticed that his hand was mummified with bandages. "Wh-" Cricket O'Malley coughed, almost hacking as he tried to clear his throat.

"Oh- fuck- hey! Robin! Robin they're awake!" A wonderfully familiar voice called out. Delphinium was there, she always was but this time Cricket O'Malley had to thank her for being here with him. His vision was still clearing up from the bright lights of the infirmary, but he noticed that her hair was thrown up into a messy bun and she had sprung up from a chair. She must've stayed the night (or the day, or however long he'd been out) with him.

"Mhmm, not too loud," Which wasn't really the first thing that he wanted to say to his girlfriend, but it was the most important thing. The lights and the noise was getting to him and his ears were in so much pain it felt like someone was keeping a constant flame on them.

"Oh shit sorry babe," Delphinium's voice was breathy and almost teary as she moved back down to his side, sitting on the edge of his hospital bed and cupping his cheek with her hand, "God, God never fucking do that to me again." Her words were almost hissed out as she pressed a kiss against his temple, "You're going to give me a heart attack one of these days, we found you in the middle of the woods bleeding and frostbitten. Everyone's confused about how you got frostbite in the middle of summer but," Her eyes darkened and she leaned back to focus on his eyes, "it was her wasn't she?"

"It was, it was her and she- she almost got me. I started forgetting a lot." Cricket tried to flex his hands, but it was almost impossible with the bandages around his hands. "Not you, she never got me to forget you."

There was something sad in Delphinium's smile, something that was regretful but grateful as she pressed another kiss to his forehead, "I'm a lot like that, rather unforgettable." There was a teasing lilt to her voice (lilts sound so wonderful when they were coming out of her mouth), "Anna Arachne and I dealt with her as well, but it was the two of us against one so we must've won a bit sooner than you. Good thing too, because since we got out earlier we could make it into the woods and we could find you before you get too fucked up from the cold."

Cricket O'Malley's hands were clumsy and warm as he settled them on Delphinium's waist, enjoying the silence and the very human warmth of his girlfriend. But there was something that needed to be covered, something that couldn't go forgotten and brushed over no matter how easy it would be to do that. "You forgot me, didn't you? Both of you did."

She paused at that, eyes averted and Cricket O'Malley knew the answer from just that (but he needed to hear her say it), "I did, and I think Anna Arachne did as well. But we remembered, isn't that what matters?" There was a small note of desperation in her voice, like she was so very worried that the Strangeness would break their relationship because she was weak. And he knew her fears and he raised up his gauze covered hands to cover hers on his face.

"It is, and if you want to tell me, I'd like to know how you remembered me. Because the memories that she took were of, uh, of my mom's singing voice and...Jonathan," His words trailed off a little bit, and he almost chewed on his lower lip. He cringed at the pain, swiping his tongue over the reopened wound, and just barely squeezed Delphinium's hands with his. "And I remembered it because, uh, it was a huge thing. I think she had an issue or something with my mom and was taking me to mess with her, and that just. I got really fucking angry and that rage just kinda fueled me."

She tilted her head, looking him up and down and chewing on her bottom lip, "There's something different about you, Cricket O'Malley, you're a lot different." Head tilted as she combed her hand through Cricket O'Malley's hair. There were a few things different about her, how weathered he was now, the calloused hands covered in gauze but before they had been protected to avoid horribly blisters that were probably still going to be forming. "I don't think you're exactly a fragile little blackberry blossom anymore." Delphinium smiled, chuckling a little as she dipped her head down to kiss him.

"Abrus! O'Malley!" Robin's brusque voice cut through their romantic scene as they clapped their hands, "I appreciate the fact that you've been here for your partner this entire time, but I don't think that we should be getting all physical and attentive when he still has bandages on his hands. Now up so I can check on Cricket's hands, you can stay to distract him but nothing more." Another clap of their hands (Robin was really good at making them feeling like children, but Cricket O'Malley figured it was just some sort of counselor gene), and the two separated. Cricket O'Malley reached out his hands for Robin to unwrap.

"Hey, darling? Keep your eyes on me, okay? I saw your hands before they got cleaned and wrapped and they're pretty fucking disgusting, I don't think you want to see that kinda stuff." Delphinium tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear, "They're pretty gross right now, but within a few days they'll look a lot better. But you're definitely not going to be able to play your guitar for a while, unless you want to seriously mess up your hands."

Cricket O'Malley frowned, chewing on the inside of his cheek, "Damn, the kids are going to be so disappointed that I- _aah_ -" He gasped out a warm air hit his hands. It was only Robin's strong hands that stopped him from curling his hands up and aggravating his wounds further. And even though his girlfriend was probably right, and that he shouldn't look at his frostbitten hands, he still had to know.

He really wished he hadn't looked. The palm of his right hand was cut up and ripped to shreds (which explained the bloody hand print on the tree) and both of his fingertips were a horrible black. His toes curled a little, and that got a similar reaction, but not as bad. The muscles in his hands tensed and twitched and Robin clucked their tongue.

"You're rather lucky that you were wearing those socks, Cricket O'Malley, otherwise you'd be in a wheelchair because you shouldn't walk on frostburnt feet." Robin started to smear paste on his hands that made him wriggle and writhe and unsuccessfully try to wrench his hands out of their grip, "Will you stop? I know it hurts but you're not getting away from this."

"I'm- _aah_ \- fuck god, that smarts," Cricket O'Malley chewed on his lower lip as he tensed every muscle that he could, "I'm not trying to get away it's just- _ah Jesus Christopher and Mary-_ "

"You're so Southern, Crick," Delphinium laughed out, bright and shining and warm. "But..uh, once Robin leaves I'll tell you the story of what happened with us and...the Lady."

Robin stiffened up, pausing in their wrapping of Cricket O'Malley's hands, "Lads, I really hope that you ain't talking about the same Lady I think you are." Their eyes darted between the two of them, and whatever answer they seem to have found disappointed them. Their shoulders slump and their face screwed up in frusteration and they gave a little bit of a rougher tug of the gauze than necessary ("Hey- ow- that's my hand") and they fiddled with the roll of it. "How much do you know about Frau, fellas?"

"I know that she knows my parent, and that something happened there," He narrowed his eyes at them, head tilting slightly as he looked Robin up and down, "Do you know what happened?"

Robin let out a canny little laugh, their hands moving to rub at their upper arms, "Y'know, funny thing. I do know what happened. I was actually a camper when it happened-" Which was just odd to try to think about, Robin commanded a room, seemed older than her years, but they were only a year older than Cricket. "-Course back then I wasn't exactly Robin, I went by Jenny." A rough little laugh again and they ran their fingers across small scars on their fingers, "Things were weird back then, they've been weird for a good long time though, so no one questioned it. I was young too, barely able to be at camp but I just got in through being an early birthday." They paused, fiddling with an old rope that they wore as a bracelet.

"It wasn't right, first off the bat. There were disappearances from before the first night, hands in the lake, weird things happening. Bones, and wolves howling and we're not sure if it was the Wolves or if it was just a brief appearance of actual ones but, it was creepy enough to us kids. Junebug was the oldest at camp, ze wasn't really in charge legally but after Porter was found in the lake and just barely survived, everyone started looking to zir for answers. Ze had a few other people with zir, Stag and Addie and Fairfax-" Robin's smile was a little softer as they mentioned their old counselor, "-So it wasn't like ze was carrying the weight of the world on zir shoulders. But things started getting cold, like freezing cold and not even Matt- who was the lifeguard at the time- could really help out. The lake started being something that was banned, no one went near it. Well, almost no one."

"My parent went to it, didn't ze." It wasn't even a question, but a statement. That sounded like something Junebug would do, go to a forbidden lake just to tempt fate and dare the person tormenting zir kids (and Cricket O'Malley always knew that he and his siblings weren't Junebug's only kids, not when ze was so happy about going to the same haunted camp).

"That ze did," Robin's shoulders slumped, and they wrapped their arms around their body and hugged themself. "It was fine the first few times, it was! It really really was, ze wasn't in any trouble and the lake didn't do anything. And then we- and by we I mean me and the others in the Worms at the time- decided that if it was safe enough for Junebug, it was safe enough for us. And of course, it wasn't safe enough. One of us got pushed out into the middle and we couldn't get him, and so we had to run into the counselor meeting and- and Junebug was there with Addie. And we were all stumbling over each other and trying to explain that Cleo was in the middle of the lake and we couldn't get her. And of course at that point Junebug immediately jumped to help, and we were stuck racing after Addie and zir." They paused again, worrying their bracelet and rubbing it against their wrist.

"She almost died that day, Cleo I mean, she almost drowned and it took both Junebug and Addie to get her out of the middle of the lake. And Junebug, Junebug got pulled down-" Robin's voice got a little choked up and they kneaded their old skirt in between their hands- "Ze got pulled down to the bottom of the lake, and just barely had time to pass Cleo to Addie to get out of the lake before ze did." Their grip on their skirt was turning their knuckles white as they took a slow breath, "None of us really know what happened in the lake that day, just that it took so long for Junebug to resurface and when ze did ze was freezing to the touch."

Cricket O'Malley took a second, categorizing everything that he had just learned into neat little boxes. It quickly got harder and harder to figure out before he realized it. A gust of breath left his lips as his hand raised up to cover his mouth, "Oh my god...I was just- I was just a fucking replacement that Dolores felt entitled to because Junebug cheated her out of a kid!"

Robin gave a slight nod, but didn't look in his eyes as they finished wrapping up his other hand, "Yeah, probably. But you should be fine, she rarely chooses someone as a Favorite more than once."

"Rarely doesn't mean never," The three of them in the room jumped at the new voice coming from the doorway. Anna Arachne Aberdeen stood there, seeming a little relieved that Cricket O'Malley was okay, "Glad to see you're up, O'Malley." There was a little lift to vir lips as vi moved to sit on his other side.

Seeing that the information was out there and that the bandages were properly redone, Robin stood up, "I'm...going to handle the kids, but I better see you at the campfire without your guitar Cricket O'Malley, or I'll make those burns of yours worse." There was very little humor in the threat as they left the room.

"I want to know what happened," Cricket's voice rang out in the silence that had followed Robin's exit. He kneaded uselessly at the blankets as a replacement for using his hands to actually fiddle with someone. "I know she made you two forget me, she told me and even if I couldn't trust her, I felt it happen. And it's not like I blame you, I mean I forgot a lot of things myself but. I want to know how you snapped out of it."

Anna Arachne and Delphinium stared a long look, and Delphinium was the first to break it. She let out a low sigh, chewing on her lower lip as she moved to take up Robin's chair to be able to face her partner, "Alright, uh, we'll start with when we noticed that you were missing, okay? We'll go from there," Her gaze drifted to Anna Arachne, waiting for vir agreement, and once she had it she rolled her shoulders back. "So, of course when we saw you weren't there, we both got extremely worried..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter is going to be what happened to Delphinium and Anna Arachne Aberdeen!


	3. Chapter 3

The dark that had overtaken the room wasn't enough for Delphinium to miss the floor underneath her. The floor that had replaced the warm back of her partner, "Cricket?"

There was no answer, but there was another noise in the room.

"Ugh, fuck, Delphi is this one of your games because it's not funny!" Anna Arachne's voice rang out in the dark, so very close were Delphinium found herself sitting. 

She blindly reached out, flailing her hands out and around her until she hit something warm and yanked it against her chest, "Anna, Anna I fucking hope this is you!"

"What are you talking about, Abrus, you aren't touching me!" And that's when Delphinium felt the arm in her grasp go freezing cold.

A lilting laugh, all high and crystalline, rung out in the room, and then everything lit up. "You're holding me, Delphinium Abrus!" The woman in her arms was absolutely not Anna Arachne, she was tall and thin. Long white-blonde hair that seemed to be flowing in an unseen wind, skin that was constantly frosted over, and perfectly sculpted nails.

Delphinium pushed off and away from her, standing up and whirling to try to find where she had put her axe. It was at the base of the bed, but before she could even move foreward to grasp it, it disappeared. Flickering in and out of existence before disappearing in another gust of wind, "Who are you!" Without an axe in her hands she felt naked and exposed, but she lashed out and grabbed the closest thing to her. It was the television remote (not her best weapon but at least it was small and easily swung). 

"Oh, come on! You know exactly who I am!" Dolores (because that's who she was, there wasn't a doubt in Delphinium's mind that this was the woman who had almost killed her partner) was a little too smug for comfort as she perched on the end of the sofa. "I'm not here for anything really important, not enough. I mean you aren't even important to me! It's what you have that is the important thing I'm here for."

"And what are you here for?" Anna Arachne Aberdeen scowled, vir upper lip raising as vi stared at the Lady. "Because I'm not going with you!"

"Oh, I forgot how narcissistic you humans can be!" Frau Faste laughed, raising her hand to cover her lips as she playfully fanned her face, "You're also not important to me! I'm here for your memories of that joyous little buglet that you have with you! Hmm, what was his full name...oh right, Cricket O'Malley!" Her eyes sparkled, small fractals running through her pupils and slowly turning it the same white as the rest of her eyes. "Thank you so much for giving me that full name, by the way, this would've taken so much more time without it!"

Delphinium stiffened, eyes wide as she made eye contact with Anna Arachne who was suddenly pale, "You don't- you aren't going to fucking touch my partner." The words were hissed out, and she straightened up, readying her makeshift club of a remote. 

"Oh, but I already have! You see, he's already very safe and at my home. I just have to work on the loose ends! I need one memory from each of you," She held her hand out, like it was something that they could (or would) just hand over. "It doesn't even have to be a _good_ memory, it just has to involve him, I'm sure that you have a lot of those." Her smile was almost playful as she curled a lock of her hair around her finger, "So I'll give you a little bit of time to figure out how exactly you want to forget him, and don't worry, I'll take very good care of him."

Delphi did what she did best, and swung whatever weapon she had in her hand towards the woman. Unlike what happens when she normally does this, the Lady merely vaporized into snowflakes and reformed near Anna Arachne Aberdeen. "That was quite rude of you, I'll have you know that most people who I take aren't so rude! There's a reason I chose Cricket O'Malley and neither of you, and honestly you don't even deserve him! I've been watching all of you for so long, and I've finally come to the decision that I can care for him better than any of you can."

Delphinium paused, mouth dropped just a bit in surprise because. Who did this woman think she was? Who did this woman think that she was in order to decide what was the best plan for Cricket O'Malley, "You're kidding right?"

The Lady looked almost insulted, affronted as she adjusted herself on the couch arm, "Of course not! Why would I ever be joking about something like this?" Her left hand splayed slightly over her bared collarbones (right over the large necklace laying there, all diamonds and silver and if it was anything more real than Strangeness, it would've been extremely expensive). "Cricket O'Malley's already working on accepting that fact, and I just need to clean up loose ends! Like you, you're the loose ends and like I said, just one memory. Freely given is most preferred but if I have to, I will take them by force. You won't even know what you've missed though, so there's really no issue, is there?"

"You're joking about that, right? Of course there's something to miss there, it's an entire fucking person! No matter how seamlessly you're going to take the memories, there's going to be something missing." Anna Arachne spoke up about it, which was odd on it's own. Delphinium never thought that vi and her partner liked each other, even in anything more than just friends. She remembered that they had used to be close, used to have good memories together, and then something had happened. 

"Oh don't worry, I'm very good at this, but thank you for agreeing to get your memory taken!" There's an almost childlike glee in her voice as she reached out and tapped Anna Arachne's forehead.

* * *

Anna Arachne Aberdeen was thrust into the past, and vi found virself missing something that hadn't been there for a while.

The memory was simple, most memories from vir childhood were like that. But it was lovely in the way that the past often was when it was remembered (or in this case, forgotten), all tinted and bright and nostalgic. This memory was simple, it was just vir and Cricket O'Malley at the bank of the lake during one summer when he was just Cricket and vi was just Anna Arachne. "And so, she was just running right at the climbing wall and I was screaming at her to stop what she was doing and of course she wasn't going to be-because she's y'know a kid, she's a kid!" Cricket was stumbling over his words, gesturing all wide and reaching.

Anna Arachne reached out and grabbed his wrist, "Will you stop? You're about to smack my face and push me in, and this story is not fucking entertaining enough to make that worth it." Right, vi had been cursing using the new words that vi had accidentally learned while listening in to a conversation that was going on in the counselor's cabin. 

Cricket pouted, shoulders slumped as he crossed his arms over his chest and looked pointedly away from vir, "You're mean,"

Anna Arachne Aberdeen (the one forgetting, not the one being forgotten because a memory is taken in it's entirety) remembered how guilty vi felt. How vi didn't want to make Cricket actually upset or pout and vi had just been making a joke. And the memory (the soon to be lost one, the one that Anna Arachne Aberdeen was trying to keep from freezing over) Anna Arachne paused, shoulders slumping down as vi reached out to place vir hand over his, "No- wait- don't- I'm sorry."

It had been one of the first (and only times) vi had genuinely apologized and felt bad about what vi had done. And it was slowly slipping through vir fingers, things started getting blurrier. Where they by the lake, or were they by the old cabins kicking rocks, was that a different time? A different apology? (Cricket was always good at getting vir to apologize, it was a little painful to try to balance it all out). Was Cricket telling a story about Mary-Alice, or was it about Cam? Did vi apologize? Or did vi just let him feel bad and keep staring?

Did this happen? Was this something that Anna Arachne Aberdeen had invented to try to keep the memory of someone who...existed? Did Cricket exist? Vi knew that O'Malley existed, knew that there was someone at camp named O'Malley. It was on the schedule, vi had seen it on the schedule before but vi couldn't remember what slot it was in. But did the person exist? Strangeness took many forms after all, and maybe it had just been another trick, making them think an activity had been scheduled with a teacher without there being a teacher there.

Anna Arachne Aberdeen's eyes snapped open and vi found virself staring up at the ceiling. The wood of the ceiling was covered in frost and there were two people in the room with vir. One was familiar, Delphinium Abrus, the one who always was daring the older kids to use the rope swing into lake from dangerous heights. And one was absolutely strange, a pale lady perched on the arm of the sofa, "Delphi, what's going on?" Shortening a name, that was something vi did with someone else important, someone who was not there right now.

"Anna Arachne, tell me that you know who I'm talking about when I ask you if you remember him." There was a note of fear in her voice, a little trembling that was so horribly suited to someone who named herself after poisonous plants. Vi took vir sweet time in answering (after all the answer was no, so it wasn't like the answer was going to be anywhere near the realm of comforting so why rush) as vi looked her up and down. At the shaking hand grasping the remote and the white knuckles and the animal prey eyes, and vi couldn't help virself from laughing.

"No- No sorry I'm not laughing at the question but I'm laughing at you!" It was a little mean, wasn't it? Anna Arachne couldn't exactly remember why exactly vi was being so mean, but really. She's being rather weak, isn't she? All frightened and showing it to people, showing it to everyone that looked at her. She was supposed to be a poisonous plant, and yet she was weak like this? "Stop that shaking!" It was almost hilarious again and vi raised up a hand to cover vir lips.

Delphinium paused, the remote lowering slightly as she tilted her head and creased her eyebrows together, "What? Why are you being so mean?" It was a fair question, one that Anna Arachne couldn't find virself able to answer. Why was vi being so mean?

The lady (the Lady) just chuckled slightly and glided (her feet barely seemed to touch the floor) to vir side. Wrapping a freezing arm around vir shoulder, her other hand rested on Anna Arachne's chest, "Well, memories are who we are, aren't they? Take one building block out and the whole tower goes down. Darling Anna Arachne-" there was no third name, why did it feel like there should be another name- "has known darling-" And here the Lady's voice crackled out into something inaudible and incomprehensible, like ice cracking and frost forming and wind blowing- "for many many years, so of course vi would be changed by him, as well as changed by the loss of him."

Anna Arachne drew vir eyebrows together, narrowing vir eyes down at some spot on the ground as vi tried to figure out exactly who this he was. Who could've changed vir to the point that Delphinium (someone who vi knows very well, but who had introduced them?) could see it within an instant.

"Give vir back the memories of-" Delphinium's voice also shattered into incomprehensibility, but this was different than the Lady's version. Delphinium's incomprehensibility was the sharpening of a knife blade, the whistle of wind when you're swinging something faster than you should. "-virs so different, give the memories back."

There was a slight chill to the air (it was summer, why was it feeling like late fall) as the Lady drifted closer to Delphinium, "You make so many demands for the shake of your hand, Delphinium. What an odd name that is, Delphinium Abrus. Larkspur...such a poisonous plant for such a soft...King. No crown, no army, no court to rule over. Soon, you won't even have a Monarch by your side. You will truly be a Lonely King, but maybe you got yourself into that spot. You isolated yourself, you named yourself after something dangerous and poisonous as a way of warding people away from yourself. And you couldn't even keep the one person who bothered to see how much of that was a facade, you lost him to _me._ "

The Lady (Dolores, a voice that sounded like a cold wind in vir ears told him) was making points, but it seemed wrong. Something about this entire thing seemed wrong and off, just a little to the left and to the right and to the side of what it should be, but Anna Arachne couldn't figure out exactly what was wrong with it all. It was like looking at an out of focus photograph with something edited into the background but it all blended together and there was nothing. 

That's what was wrong. There was something so very wrong with this picture because there was a large gaping wound ripped out of it, someone crossed out of the picture, a shoddy Photoshop job that left the edges blurry and the background faded. "What did you take from me?" Vir voice was soft, like it always was, but it was almost trembling. Vi knew vi sounded like a hypocrite with how weak vir voice sounded, after giving Delphinium such a hard time about it (why did vi give her such a hard time about it? What did vi expect from her?)

"Oh, don't worry, just the same thing I'm taking from her that I took from you," Dolores smiled, all pleased and relaxed, as she coasted her hand down Delphinium's cheek and neck until she collapsed to the ground.

In the same instant, Anna Arachne [there was something else, vi was more than just two names] was on the ground by her side. The trail that Dolores had traced was quickly spreading frost across her neck, creeping up on Delphinium's lips and collarbones as it began to spiral further and further out across her skin. "What did you do to her?"

"Oh, and now you care? That's rather adorable, if a tad surprising! I thought for sure getting rid of-" Again, more incomprehensible noise- "was going to keep you changed! Seems like it's a little harder to fix that!" A light laugh as she perched once again on the arm of the sofa (which was slowly getting completely overtaken in ice by the second), "I'm just taking a memory from her, like I did from you, but don't worry." Her hand traced over the expansive necklace that graced her bare chest. In front of Anna Arachne's eyes, another small piece of the web was created, silver spreading across her skin and interlocking another jewel into the necklace. "You're going to be just fine after this, just a tad confused."

* * *

In her mind, Delphinium Abrus was freezing. She knew this memory, knew it because it was more recent. Only a few years ago, right at the beginning of when she and Cricket O'Malley (she gripped tight to that memory, to the name of her partner and her lover and her Monarch in the weirdest gender sense that there was) began dating. It wasn't at camp, it was far too cold for that (and The Lady hadn't been seen for years until now), but it was at Delphinium's (not being called that, her parents never called her that but Cricket O'Malley made a point to always do so) winter chateau. 

Ice skating on the lake, the lake that wasn't as frozen as they actually thought. The ice had only started spider webbing when Delphinium had reached the middle of the lake, and Cricket O'Malley was still working on lacing up the second-rate, ill fitting ice skates that originally belonged to Delphinium's father. All he had as a warning was the loud cracking of the ice as she broke through, and the loud scream that had left her lips, but that was all he really needed. In a second, Cricket O'Malley was booking it across the lake, barely even skating as he slid himself across the fracturing lake in order to grab Delphinium's wrist before she plunged all the way under.

"I'm right here," he had gasped out, grinning a little wildly as he reached into the lake to grab Delphinum's other hand and began to yank her up and out of the lake. "I got you, dude-" (And wasn't that a trip, hearing him call her anything but endearments)- "I got you," Cricket O'Malley pushed back, the ice cracking further underneath him (and now, after she had read on the ways to help someone, she knew that this was a horrible idea and easily could've gotten them both trapped under the ice) and moved back enough to pull Delphinium up onto the ice.

Her teeth were chattering and she was trembling on the ice as Cricket O'Malley picked her up into his large and strong arms. They were both covered in freezing water, but Cricket O'Malley was calm as he moved fast over the ice. Barely letting his weight drop to the other foot before he's pushing off and running towards the bank. There was a little odd step as he got to the bank and had to run over the snow covered grounds in ice skates (there was no time to take them off, and when he thought back on it Cricket O'Malley admitted that he completely had forgotten that he was wearing them at the time). The last thing before she passed out (briefly, according to her parents it was only five minutes) was the lights of her porch as her parents opened the door.

The memory didn't finish (why didn't it finish please don't make her forget this, let her just have this one night, just this one) there. It picked up again after Delphinium had been woken up, covered in blankets and having Cricket O'Malley's large sweater and sweatpants on over nothing (he had volunteered to change her, telling her parents about how dangerous keeping her in cold and wet clothes was). Cricket was next to her on the couch, one arm wrapped around her shoulders as he focused on the television.

But of course, eventually his eyes slid over to her and a large grin broke out on his lips, "You're awake!" There was just a little bit of worry in his eyes as he shifted to focus on her, moving around to check over her and make sure that her temperature was coming back to normal. It was that sort of care, how Cricket O'Malley was selfless and wonderful and caring, that made her fall in love with him.

She doesn't want to forget this, doesn't want to forget how wonderful it felt to be the sole focus of his attention. Delphinium doesn't want to forget this day, or any of the other days that they had together, and she clings to bits and pieces. The way Cricket O'Malley's eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, the coiled muscles in his arms from long days spent working, the scars on his hands from silly mistake. But things still began to drip through her fingers like so much water.

Where his eyes blue or brown? Was the scar coming through his left or his right eyebrow? When was this? How many years had it been since she had almost drowned? The details were getting muddier by the second, like a puddle that someone had splashed through. Who had really pulled her out of the lake, was it him or was it her father? The figure was blurry, indistinct, but it was tall and strong and comforting, and the only person that fit that (in her memory) was her father.

Delphinium's eyes snapped open, and she felt lost. There was something that was missing now, right to the left of where she was sitting, it felt like someone should be sitting there. That there should be a hand in hers and a laugh in her ear and the sweet sense of company with no expectations. But there wasn't, there was a gap in the world and it was right next to her. There was something that should be here and there wasn't. All she could do was stare at the gaps in between her fingers and it felt like there was a piece missing.

She pushed herself up to her feet, having to lean on the sofa (it was freezing and hard to the touch and when she looked down it was almost solid ice), "What's...what's going on?" Delphinium noticed that Anna Arachne Aberdeen was kneeling on the ground by where she had been laying, "Why was I on the ground." She pressed the heel of her hand against her temple, massaging there to try to ward off a headache.

"I'm not that sure honestly," Vir voice was a little bit of a hum as vi came over to Delphinium's side, "There was a woman here, all in white and jewels and I think she was something Strange."

"Do you feel it?" The question was a little desperate and she knew that she was showing her hand a bit too much here, "There's something-"

"Missing?" Vi finished her sentence for her, arms crossed over vir chest as vir fingers drummed out an anxious beat high up on vir arms, "Yeah, there's something- empty about this room now. I can't place it, there's just something missing. Do you think she took something?"

"I think she took someone, it's a person that's missing. I know that, there's absolutely someone missing. It's someone," Delphinium flexed her hands, rubbing them together and feeling like something was missing, "It's someone." She repeated, narrowing her eyes as she ran her mental fingers over the jagged edges of her memory. There was some _thing_ missing as well, but that was easier to place. "My axe is also missing,"

"Well what does it look like," There was a mean little note in Anna Arachne Aberdeen's voice that definitely didn't use to be there, that was new and another Strange thing.

"For one, it's a fucking axe with barbed wire around the head of it." She rolled her eyes, grunting slightly as she started to (carefully, in case it was there) lift up and move around the blankets that were on the bed. Who had came up with the idea of bringing out the mattress, who had brought it out. Anna Arachne wouldn't have, vi claimed a sensitive constitution where vi could never do that much heavy lifting, and Delphinium would never be able to lift the thing. Who's work was this. "And two, it has carvings on the base of it. Two flowers, the ones I'm named after."

"Ah, the lie that you're named after!" Vir voice was oddly cheerful in a strange mean way, the same way laughter could be mean. It was another thing wrong, something that was just slipping into the uncanny valley of not-right. Too little layers of inside jokes, too much enthusiasm that wasn't communicated in any sort of a caring way. There was a missing piece, some sort of missing link between it being a joke and it being just straight up mean.

"You aren't like this, you aren't like this," Delphinium straightened up as she squeezed the blanket in between her hands. Her words came out in a rushed out whisper as she chewed on her bottom lip and tried to remember, "This isn't right there's something so very fucking wrong."

A memory came, unbidden but not unwelcome, and Delphinium remembered why this meanness felt so foreign coming from Anna Arachne Aberdeen. There were people missing, or well one specific person that was missing. Tall and strong and muscled and caring (caring caring caring he made Delphinium feel cared for for once in her life), with a smile like a break in the clouds (the cloud that Anna Arachne always pulled over the sun) and hands of someone who had worked so hard for their entire life. Someone who tempered Anna Arachne's meanness, but encouraged fighting so long as it stayed friendly. They had affection there, understanding, and it was wonderful. 

Memories began to flow into her mind, slotting into all the small cracks and crevices that Delphinium didn't even notice were there. The day at the lake where they had their first kiss, messy and clumsy and giggled out because they were ditching their counselor-in-training duties. The day when Cricket O'Malley dragged her out of the frozen lake and carried her back to the house. Songs that were laughed out over a little too much cheap beer and trying to sweet talk one of the senior counselors into sharing a little bit of weed. When they found some odd animal bones that were too twisted and malformed to be natural, to be normal, and dared each other to touch them.

Every kiss, hug, squeeze, song, and apology flowed back into her mind. Dislodging frost and ice and replacing it with warmth and love and-

"Oh god, oh fuck- Triple A we have to find Cricket-" The nickname was faster than the full name, and so as she dropped the blanket she noticed the axe was back. Covered in frost, all tinged with snowflakes on the blade and the wire, but it was there. The carvings were there and the imperfect notches were there as well, all the memories held in it were there as well. All the times that she had swung her axe to save people, to save herself, to flee or to help. "-Cricket's not here, she took him oh fuck- she took him."

And there was the rage like an old friend coming to rush alongside her veins. Delphinium barely stooped low enough to grab the handle of her axe, running her hands along it as she moved towards the door without even waiting for Anna Arachne Aberdeen to follow. It felt like just an extension of her arm, the axe did. It was so very familiar, all notched and worn in her hand print and her usage. Something that she could use without seeing, without properly remembering what she was and she knew it.

She understood what Sweeney Todd meant when he said that his arm was complete again. And she's going to get her partner back.


End file.
